


such big talk of happiness

by upheaval



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: CW: FOOD MENTIONS, Character Study, Gen, Not Incest, POV Second Person, Relationship Study, yes beta we live like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24829081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/upheaval/pseuds/upheaval
Summary: Miya Osamu grows up in the company of background noise.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu
Comments: 20
Kudos: 71





	such big talk of happiness

**Author's Note:**

> hello! first off i want to give a big thank you to my beta reader [nyshu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyshu_r/pseuds/nyshu_r) for being willing to read my work so thank you you're awesome :D another thing: i listened to "i don't want to watch the world end with someone else" by clinton kane which honestly just makes this sound more like incest but This Is Not Incest i fucking swear.

_"There are two twins on motorbikes but one is farther up the road, beyond  
the hairpin turn, or just before it, depending on which [twin] you are. It  
could have been so beautiful—you scout out the road ahead and I will  
watch your back, how it was and how it will be, memory and fantasy—  
but each [twin] wants to be the other one." _

— Richard Siken, "You Are Jeff"

You are eleven when Ma shows you the photo album with that one picture of you and Atsumu after a fight with your backs facing each other. She says you were very upset at Atsumu after that time, and the fact that she says so makes you more upset at Atsumu for reasons unknown. It goes like this: you were nine and touched a volleyball for the first time the day before, meaning Atsumu was also nine and touched a volleyball for the first time the day before. The instructors at the volleyball clinic taught you how to serve underhand the day before too, and Atsumu served the only volleyball in the house into the street.

“You’re stupid,” you had said to him, and then you kicked him.

He kicked you back. “You’re stupider,” he said to you.

Ma says you didn’t talk to each other for the rest of the day, but the next day, it was like nothing happened. She confesses she was anxious that she may have brought a bad influence into your lives, and you don’t understand why she would feel that way, but you reassure her regardless that she didn’t make a mistake. She smiles at you and pats your shoulder. “I know, Osamu,” she says. “I know.”

You wonder where the sentimentality came from, although it doesn’t matter to you. The sun is out today. You and Atsumu both received volleyballs for your birthday. Life hugs you with a smile and tells you to do your best, and you hug it back.

* * *

Sometime during your first year of high school, Atsumu goes to the National Youth Camp and you don’t. You are disappointed, but you figure it’s better that it’s you who is left behind than Atsumu. He is fifteen and perhaps the most dramatic person you have ever known, and you know that if your roles were switched, he would cry to Ma everyday for the entire week, mourning the bragging rights that were supposedly his.

So, it’s fine. For the most part, you stay silent about it and only complain to Suna and Gin when they ask, usually something along the lines of, “I can’t believe they’d invite a dumbass like ‘Tsumu,” and then they’d nod their heads and solemnly agree.

On the first night he is away, it is quiet when you settle into bed. It was quiet when you were brushing your teeth in the bathroom that is missing a toothbrush, and it was quiet when you lowered the blinds in a way that made too much noise, and it was quiet when you climbed the ladder of the bunk bed. It is almost nice, but before reaching that threshold, it becomes uncomfortable. You should be hearing Atsumu toss and turn on the bottom bunk, but instead, you are staring at your ceiling and willing yourself so hard to hear Atsumu rustling on his futon in Tokyo that you think you are hallucinating.

You sigh. The hallucination shatters. Silence. 

You have never spent a night apart from Atsumu, even at the age of fifteen. Sometimes, even you forget this. 

* * *

Here, you are seventeen, and Atsumu just finished telling you he would be the happier one, and beyond saying it back, you have nothing else to proffer him, because, maybe he would be happier in the end. Maybe it would be you on your deathbed and him looming over you reciting every wrong turn you made that he didn’t. Maybe it would be you on your deathbed in the company of regret and a little twitching in your fingertips telling you that you were wrong all this time. It is not something you can accept, and you know that if you never leave his side, there is a greater chance of it coming true. So you decide to leave, and that is that.

In reality, it’s not so bad. You only think about it on days you fight with Atsumu, but you reckon he might think about it more than you do. Ma once said he needs you a little more than you need him, and reconsidering her words now, something about it clicks a little more than it did when she first told you.

You are laying in bed when Atsumu brings it up again. “Are you really not gonna keep going?” he asks, knowing the answer—you will not keep going. He knows that better than you. “Ugh. I know you’re not.”

“Then why’d you ask?” you say. Atsumu tosses and turns on the bottom bunk, rapid and jarring in a way that only reveals itself the night before a match against a particularly impressive opponent. You know why he asks. It is desperation that grips at his voice and forces his words out of his mouth, foul and impolite like a person who repeatedly rings the doorbell even when you tell them you’re coming to the door.

“I dunno.” Atsumu sighs. He quiets for a moment. “It’s so bright in here,” he says.

“Okay.”

“You didn’t lower the blinds.”

You click your tongue. “You do it. I’m not climbing down the ladder.”

“No, I literally did it yesterday. It was your turn today, you slacker.”

“What will you do if I fall and break my ankle, huh? I’d be benched for the next few months,” you say, half-serious and ever-cognizant of all the ins and outs of Atsumu’s brain and all the things he hates hearing.

“Ugh,” he says, and goes to lower the blinds. The room goes pitch black, and you close your eyes to the sound of Atsumu shuffling back into bed. “What difference does it make in the long run, anyway,” he huffs.

You do not respond. It is not your place to do so.

* * *

You turn twenty this year. You are home for the summer with Atsumu in tow, and Ma holds up a piece of dough and declares it gyoza time. Atsumu cheers because he likes making gyoza. You do not cheer because you are offended by Atsumu’s past creations that rip open as they are being cooked. Atsumu frowns at you. He knows you like making gyoza too.

“Atsumu, please wrap them _with_ the folds at the top this time,” Ma asks, like an angel. “The ones you made last time ended up scorched on one side because it kept falling over in the pan when I wasn’t watching.”

You agree and shove Atsumu’s shoulder. Ma laughs and notes how you haven’t changed at all as she slices the dough and rolls out each individual piece. You think she hasn’t changed either, that she is the same mother who guided you and Atsumu’s little hands to create the folds at the top of the gyoza, the same mother who showed you pictures from photo albums, and the same mother who cleaned you up and chided you after a fight.

“Ah. I forgot how to do the folds,” Atsumu laughs, prying his gyoza apart.

Ma sighs. “Gosh, I have to reteach you every single time,” she says, and abandons her dough to give Atsumu a step-by-step tutorial. You, on the other hand, have had the process memorized since she first taught you. As far as execution goes, you get more than enough practice.

Atsumu rambles on about the particulars of his new V.League team and his peculiar teammates, pausing every so often to focus on the spacing of the folds on his gyoza. Ma listens and nods and asks questions, and you wonder if he will ever shut up, though it seems like the end is not in sight. You also wonder how Ma listened to and nodded at and asked questions for small, nine-year-old Atsumu who just returned from the volleyball clinic and talked his head off about the cool moves (bumps, probably) he learned, because really, he hasn’t changed. Twenty-year-old Atsumu is just a nine-year-old Atsumu who lived for eleven more years without learning anything, except maybe to not be an asshole. Even that he hasn’t mastered.

You go to sear the first batch of gyoza, hissing when a drop of oil hits your bare forearm. The pan of wrapped gyoza is full with the handiwork of you and Atsumu and Ma, although, after one glance at the pan, anyone with eyes could tell which ones are Atsumu’s. They are uneven and lumpy, and upon looking at them, you laugh out loud.

He glares at you. “You’re just full of yourself because you have a natural affinity for cooking.”

“I’m not going to deny that, if that’s your goal,” you reply, shrugging as you shift the gyoza around in the pan. Atsumu sighs, slouching in his chair and crossing his arms.

“Well,” Ma says, “you can be full of yourself too because you have a natural affinity for volleyball.” She brushes the flour off her hands. “I suppose this means I have two very talented sons.”

“Oh my god,” Atsumu says, beaming. “I know, right?”

“Oh my god,” you echo, exasperated. Oh your god indeed. “C’mon, you haven’t even made first string yet.”

Atsumu frowns. “I am still an excellent player, thank you very much. Division One just has very high expectations of me.”

“Yes. That is why they’re D1, ‘Tsumu. It’s because, get this, it’s _difficult_.”

Atsumu huffs. “Well. I think that if you played for MSBY, you would feel the same way that I do,” he says, and he is right. Perhaps, this is exactly why you abandoned volleyball. Because Atsumu can endure this, and you can’t. That is the fundamental difference that goes beyond passion and its upper limits, and you’d be damned if you had to fight it.

The gyoza makes a noise in the pan. You remove the lid, and plate them, bringing them to the table where Atsumu and Ma are wrapping the last few gyoza.

Ma grins. “This is precisely the reason I let you sear the gyoza. I could never bring out the smell like that.”

“I think you definitely could,” you counter. “You’re the one who taught me how to cook them.”

She laughs. “And I learned from your grandmother. Maybe the cooking gene skips generations.”

“Ma, your cooking is my favorite,” Atsumu says, mouth half full and blowing on another gyoza. “It definitely didn’t skip. ‘Samu’s just too good.”

“Maybe so,” she replies as she pries a gyoza apart with her chopsticks. “Guess I can’t compete with the culinary school student, can I? Well, let’s hope I can’t. You’re paying for that degree.”

You hum. Outside the kitchen window, the sky goes dark, leaving only the overhead lamps as light. Tomorrow, you will visit the park you used to play volleyball at with Atsumu, and tomorrow, you will visit Inarizaki High School and get nostalgic. But today, the guest rooms are still cluttered, and your old room is still open. Ma says she dusted the bunk bed a few days ago, and in passing, you realize it has been a while since you have come home. For Atsumu, it has been even longer, and with the long volleyball season and all-day practices, he doesn’t even call home half as much as you; you know this because, a few weeks ago, Ma texted you, asking if he was healthy and happy and eating well because he hasn’t called in a month, and she was worried.

You figure, at some point, missing home turns into home missing you. That’s okay, because you also figure that, at a further point, you inevitably come home. And the metaphorical cycle, ever-efficient, starts all over again.

* * *

You are twenty-three and in Sendai, stationed behind your stand emblazoned with the Onigiri Miya logo, simple and proud like everything you admire. In a townhouse in Hyogo, Ma sits in front of her television, waiting for the next hour to come around so she can see her son. The son stretches his fingers in the locker room, and he knows you and Ma are counting on him. He knows, and he also knows he will deliver results. That is who he is. That is someone you dare believe in.

It is good this way. How else would everything fall into place? How else would you be the twin beside the deathbed instead of the twin on the deathbed?

But, you decide that ‘how else’ is a useless question. There is no ‘else.’ There is you, here, and him, there, and that is how it’s supposed to be. That is how you like it.

In the end, you are just a few hundred meters away, and Atsumu knows you are—watching, cheering him on, giving him strength. In the end, it is you and him against the entire world, even when you are not standing beside him as you conquer it together. But like you said, it is for the best. Here is you, trying your hardest to be the happier one. Here are both of you, Osamu and Atsumu, happier.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kiyowrld) if you so desire :>
> 
> this took a whopping 1.5 weeks to write which is kind of sad considering how short this piece is but alas. life goes on i hope everyone has a great day/night see you next time


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